# So. The movie King Kong is about the black man, right? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 5, 2010, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840 "2010-02-05T20:13:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840/21 "2010-02-05T21:26:50Z")
I think you could make the case that the movie works as a metaphor, but I believe it would be much harder to argue that it was filmed with that metaphor in mind. IMHO, and this might be because of my white-flight liberal guilt education, but I thought Jackson’s _Kong_ was treading racist waters in its depiction of the tribespeople. Treading as in “waist deep”. ---
**Author:** ![Oakminster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/77aa72/32.png) [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840/22 "2010-02-05T22:01:10Z")
Cynic that I am, I suspect that bullshit like this comes into being largely because academic types: 1: Often have access to really good marijuana 2: Often feel pressured to demonstrate their insight by discovering allegory that isn’t really there 3: Profit (Tenure) ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840/23 "2010-02-05T22:11:46Z")
Sometimes a giant ape is just a giant ape. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840/24 "2010-02-05T22:18:18Z")
> [@Nzinga\_Seated](#): > > I have never seen the movie King Kong all the way through. I only know what I have heard about it. I know people joke a lot about it being a metaphore for the black man, white man and white woman. But are those really just jokes, or is it pretty much established that yes, indeed, King Kong symbolizes the black man? Never heard the theory before - but assume for the moment it is true. What is the intended message? In the movies, King Kong was a _sympathetic_ character. His love for the (White) woman was genuine and protective - he dies attempting to protect her (as he thinks). The drama lies in the difference between King Kong’s brutish appearance and his noble actions. It seems odd to me to attribute a racist motive to this. If the intent was racist, would not the film-makers depict King Kong as a brute in spirit as well as form? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840/25 "2010-02-05T22:22:00Z")
I’ve heard this theory, but I don’t know that anyone who’s not outraged by it buys it. I seriously doubt that Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, the producers/directors, had anything like this in mind. They were very much like Carl Denham, the fictional moviemaker who’s the Prime Mover in the flick. They actually _did_ go to locations in Asia to make their movies, living with the local people and traveling like explorers. For their silent movie **Grass** they followed nomads in their seasonal search for forage. One of the company broke a tooth on the rock-hard bread the locals produced. Ivory-tower film-makers, they weren’t. Kong actually owes an awful lot more to C and S’ film **Chang** than it does to **The Lost World** – Chang was about a SouthEast Asian village being terrorized by an unknown animal, and much of the stuff in the native village in Kong is like Chang. At the end, the reature is revealed to be A Baby Elephant C and S wanted to make a film about a gorilla fighting Komodo dragons, but didn’t know how to do it – until they saw Willis O’Brien’s work on The Lost World and the unfinished movie **Creation**. to write the script, they gor Edgar Wallace – a major superstar mystery writer of the day (It would be like getting Stephen King to write your script today). Unfortunately, he died before he could do much. Several people ultimately contributed to the script, but the bulk of the work was done by Ruth Rose – Cooper’s wife, who’d been on those early film-making expeditions. She clearly based a lot of the script and situations on those Asian expeditions. so there’s nothing in the background of the film-makers or the script to suggest that they had any idea of doing anything symbolic – they hadn’t done anything symbolic before – or anything about American Blacks – either pro or con. It’s true that there had been a movie about a gorilla abducting a black woman made before Kong – **Ingagi** – that some people hold helped get Kong funding, but Ingagi isn’t even mentioned in any of the books or articles about Kong I’ve read, including Goldner and Turner’s book, which had input from lots of folks who worked on the film. There’s also a claim that it resembles a book by H. Rider Haggard about a similar gorilla kidnapping women. Goldner and Turner explicitly disavow any outside influences on the story or script. Of course, it’s always seemed strange to me that a story nominally set on a South Sea island has both a gorilla and black natives on it. I put this down to ssome sort of expectation that jungle pictures would have blacks and a gorilla wouldn’t be out of place. Jack Driscoll explicitly compares the elaborate wall to Ankgor Wat (which is southeast Asian), and the island is populated by Dinosaurs (which don’t live anywhere). So they could put whatever they want on it. ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840/26 "2010-02-05T22:22:34Z")
I have seen the original quite a few times and the 1976 horrible remake once. I have not heard of this theory before and I can’t see how it (the movie) can be taken seriously and with such meaning when there are such flaws in the story line. Why build a wall large enough to keep the monkey out and then build a door big enough for him to get in? Does that have a deep meaning as well? It is just a movie. ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840/27 "2010-02-05T22:24:16Z")
Sorry **Malthaus** and **Cal Meacham** - I was posting as you typed. I agree with both of you. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840/28 "2010-02-05T22:29:25Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > What is the intended message? No clue. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840/29 "2010-02-05T22:33:49Z")
King Kong is supposedly based on the Jungian archtype of the Kronos myth: the primordial tyrant-father who is slain when his sons band together against him. Or maybe it’s just a cigar. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840/30 "2010-02-05T22:37:32Z")
Where’s **Eve** when we need her? 🙂 I’ve never heard of this interpretation of King Kong. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840/31 "2010-02-05T22:39:31Z")
> [@ArchiveGuy](#): > > [Here](http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC06folder/KingKong.html)’s a pretty good summation of how this interpretation is supported by the movie, as well as its place in the larger historical, political, and economic context of Depression-era America (the film was released in 1933). I wish I could check this link, but I am still working and it’s blocked here. I’ll check it from home. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840/32 "2010-02-05T22:49:54Z")
The original film’s portrayal of the human Skull Islanders is certainly racist – most strikingly, they have what are obviously African-American actors portraying the people of an island in the Pacific, implying an assumption that all “natives” are more or less the same. But the Kong-as-a-black-man theme never struck me before. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840/33 "2010-02-05T22:53:19Z")
DR. FRANK N. FURTER: What ever happened to Fay Wray? AUDIENCE: She got fucked by a forty-foot gorilla! DFNF: That delicate satin-draped frame As it clung to her thigh How I started to cry AUDIENCE: You’d **really** cry if you got fucked by a forty-foot gorilla! DFNF: 'Cause I wanted to be dressed just the same . . . – _Rocky Horror Picture Show_ ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840/34 "2010-02-05T22:56:50Z")
> [@ArchiveGuy](#): > > [Here](http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC06folder/KingKong.html)’s a pretty good summation of how this interpretation is supported by the movie, as well as its place in the larger historical, political, and economic context of Depression-era America (the film was released in 1933). > [@Nzinga\_Seated](#): > > I wish I could check this link, but I am still working and it’s blocked here. I’ll check it from home. Don’t bother. It’s, IMHO, a bit of sheer lunacy. You’re better off reading replies by someone like **CalMeachem**. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840/35 "2010-02-05T22:57:51Z")
> [@Nzinga\_Seated](#): > > I wish I could check this link, but I am still working and it’s blocked here. I’ll check it from home. Well, along with John T said, I don’t think anyone who argues for this racial/economic interpretation is saying that Cooper & Co. intended the film as a larger metaphor. But the power of symbolism is that it often transcends intention and can tap into fears, tropes, and mythologies that still resonate in the culture, and while the people of the 30s would’ve seen the monkey as merely a monkey, to see (with the luxury of historical hindsight) how it may speak to some larger currents in society at that time is not necessarily wrong or misguided. A couple of excerpts: > [@](#): > > This type of plot device is a recurrent element in films of the jungle adventure genre. The white woman comes along on the safari not only to provide romantic interest. She is usually a focus of tension between the white males and the “natives,” furnishing an opportunity for some of the former to display their virile heroism against the savages. An alternate scenario involves the search for a legendary white woman reportedly living among an obscure, remote tribe, for example, TRADER HORN (MGM 1931). In both cases the “natives” view the white woman as a special kind of fetish with magical powers. In those instances where the white woman isn’t fetishized by the “natives,” the very opposite treatment of her provides an index of their barbarity—they lack a special standard of mercy for women characteristic of civilized peoples. > > Aside from the sexual aspect implicit in the question of race, there’s the more direct, and somewhat delirious, sexual imagery in the film. The ape often functions as a most appropriate anthropoid symbol of “lower,” “animal” instincts. In this case we have a giant ape (literally a huge, hairy monster) and his unrestrained, headlong pursuit of a “blonde,” that archetypical Hollywood sex-object, ending on top of the world’s foremost phallic symbol.(1) The sexual theme touches on the standard racist myth of the black male’s exaggerated sexual potency, and the complementary notion of his insatiable desire for white women. > > As stated above, to locate these interpretations in a historical context requires that we ask questions about the specific events and trends influencing the attitudes of the film’s creators and audience. A survey of the post World War I period in the United States or, for our purposes, the fifteen years between the end of the war and the release of KING KONG in 1933, reveals a period of increasing racial and social tension. > [@](#): > > The image of King Kong on a Broadway stage may correspond very closely to white America’s attitudes toward the black men in the 1930s: an object of entertainment, but also of fear. The ape is apparently securely chained, but with the ever present potential for bursting his chains and wreaking violence and destruction with all the power of his supposed “savage” primitive nature. > > KING KONG was released a few days before Roosevelt’s inauguration in March of 1933. the high point of the Depression in terns of number of unemployed. If this period of intense capitalist crisis clearly raised the possibility of revolution, in a general sense it can be argued that Kong symbolizes this possibility, the threat of the masses “losing their chains” in a revolutionary upheaval—which conservatives always picture as a strictly chaotic, wantonly destructive dissolution of society. It should be remembered that this threat was not new; it had been haunting the capitalist world with particular Intensity since the end of the war… > > What’s important here in terms of this analysis is not so much the actual amount of Communist activity among U.S. blacks as the degree to which the government and media of communication fostered this conception and reinforced it In popular opinion, the Scottsboro Boys case in particular was one of the biggest stories of its day. No doubt it played on and contributed to the linking of a series of ideas about race, miscegenation, communism, etc. in sectors of the American consciousness. In other words, it touched on those very thoughts end fears which, as this article has argued, form the latent content of KING KONG. ---
**Author:** ![TWDuke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e495f1/32.png) [@TWDuke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TWDuke)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840/36 "2010-02-05T23:03:21Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Kong actually owes an awful lot more to C and S’ film **Chang** than it does to **The Lost World** – Chang was about a SouthEast Asian village being terrorized by an unknown animal, and much of the stuff in the native village in Kong is like Chang. A very informative post, but I take exception to that sentence. In Kong, the village stuff is prologue. Exciting prologue, to be sure, but the village is pretty much forgotten once Kong enters the picture and the real story begins. And what does the story consist of? Prehistoric animals fighting in a jungle, and a giant monster rampaging through a great city. > [@Cicero](#): > > Why build a wall large enough to keep the monkey out and then build a door big enough for him to get in? In the original and the first remake, the villagers clearly regard Kong as a god – a fearsome, malevolent god, perhaps, but one they must still accommodate and appease. (Real-life parallels would not be hard to find.) I don’t remember if it’s explicit, but it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that Kong provides protection against the giant lizards in exchange for the occasional sacrifice. In Jackson’s remake, there is no justification. The giant-ape shaped hole in the wall is just a glaringly stupid design flaw. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840/37 "2010-02-05T23:04:57Z")
> [@ArchiveGuy](#): > > … > > “Aside from the sexual aspect implicit in the question of race, there’s the more direct, and somewhat delirious, sexual imagery in the film. The ape often functions as a most appropriate anthropoid symbol of “lower,” “animal” instincts. In this case we have a giant ape (literally a huge, hairy monster) and his unrestrained, headlong pursuit of a “blonde,” that archetypical Hollywood sex-object, ending on top of the world’s foremost phallic symbol.(1) The sexual theme touches on the standard racist myth of the black male’s exaggerated sexual potency, and the complementary notion of his insatiable desire for white women.” > > … Isn’t this somewhat subverted in the actual movie? After all, King Kong doesn’t violently _rape_ the “blonde”, he dies to protect her. His actual acts in the movie make him a poor ‘symbol’ of “animal” lust - rather, the dramatic theme is that of the contrast between his animal _appearance_ and the relative “nobility” of his acts. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840/38 "2010-02-05T23:06:48Z")
“What’s a Nubian”? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840/39 "2010-02-05T23:10:07Z")
I’m not going to monkey around here, people. This thread is just one big tar baby. Don’t accuse me of being niggardly about sharing my opinions - I haven’t got one cotton-pickin’ thing to say about it one way or the other. So don’t lynch me, folks - let’s just all sit down and have a big bucket of fried chicken. (There isn’t one single racist remark in the above paragraph. Anything you see in there is you projecting your own biases!) ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840/40 "2010-02-05T23:44:31Z")
You can lay whatever kind of cultural template over almost any work of art and come up with a plausible enough analysis for almost any agenda. You could make a pretty convincing case for the theory referred to in the OP, but ultimately you’d have to watch the film for yourself to see if the intent–conscious or not–is there. I think to the extent that such racial archetypes existed in the culture of that time, it’s unavoidable to a certain extent in any art that treats of sexuality and “the other.” But I think, beyond the pervasive and unavoidable–but still ineffable–cultural context, the conscious intent was more aligned with the mythology of Psyche and Eros/Beauty and the Beast. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-movie-king-kong-is-about-the-black-man-right/527840.md?page=3)